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Leonard Nimoy

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Asimov was one of the Big Three, with ACClarke and Heinlein - the shaped SF as we know it today, would be very, very different without them.

You've heard of the Three Laws of Robotics? He da man.

The Foundation series is one of the best known SF novel series ever, and for many years was at the top of everyones' lists, kind of a 'Citizen Kane' of SF.

Personally, I don't think he's a great prose writer by any means, but his big ideas sweep you along. And he won a stack of awards over the years.

Read his Wikipedia entry.

__________________"… Times change, and so must I… we all change. When you think about it, we are all different people, all through our lives and that’s okay, that’s good! You've gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be."

I have a signed copy of Foundation that is my proudest geek possession... saw him speak twice. I'd second the Lije Bailey/Daneel Olivaw books for a good start -- start with The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun.

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"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twaint-shirts!deviantArt

Bradbury doesn't belong with Heinlein or Asimov or Clarke, not necessarily as a matter of importance or quality so much as that he's a very different kind of writer and his influence has been in a different sphere. He has the advantage(?), of course, of being required reading in so many public school curricula.

I was never a big fan of Asimov, for some reason. Or any of the Big Three, for that matter.

I've read a number of Asimov's works, but they never left much of an impression on me. The last Asimov novel I read was The Gods Themselves, and I couldn't even tell you what that was about.

I was always a fan of Larry Niven, as a kid, in the 70s and early 80s, and got into the Cyberpunks as a young adult, in the late 80s and early 90s. Compared to them, Asimov's work seemed old-fashioned, dated, and even dull--at least, to me. YMMV, of course.

I do give him credit for his big ideas, as Australis mentioned. Among other things, it was a non-fiction article by Asimov that gave Larry Niven the idea for one of his very best short stories, the Hugo award-winning "Neutron Star." Asimov himself discusses this here.

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An illusion--with intelligence! A malignant vision, with a will of pure evil!

Sturgeon belongs with them, yeah - and possibly with the "big three" as well.

Asimov was, as has been noted, an unusually humane writer for a guy who came up through the pulps. He didn't write much in the vein of adventure fiction and violence in his stories was occasional and generally had drastic personal consequences - he didn't have a Starship Troopers in him.